Restraining Order on Auction from Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher Divorce

Recently I saw an Instagram Ad by the company Invaluable, about looking at some of their auction pieces. They picked a few pieces from the estate of Elvis Presley to display to me. I have looked at some of Presley’s estate pieces on auction before. I looked at the auction in total and saw an interesting article from the past, a restraining order given to Eddie Fisher by Elizabeth Taylor! A little bit of research had me discovering that 55 years ago this month Taylor and Fisher were finally divorced. The exact date is March 6, 1954.

I’m going to look at some of the jewels Eddie Fisher bought for his
second wife, Elizabeth Taylor. The story behind the jewels and the end of the
marriage that lead to the restraining order on auction now.

Birthday Surprise

The story told by Taylor was that she and her new lover Richard Burton agreed to take a break from their affair about the time that Taylor was celebrating her 30th birthday. Burton did not send so much as a flower over to Taylor in recognition of her birthday. Eddie Fisher was aware of the affair his wife was having with her costar and wanted to try and save her marriage by buying some jewelry from Bulgari. The three pieces below consist of colored and white diamonds.

End of the Marriage

These pieces did not change Taylor’s mind about the marriage and soon
she had left Fisher and wanted a divorce. In Taylor’s book, My Love Affair with
Jewelry, Taylor claimed after the separation Fisher sent her the bill for the
pieces. She did pay it. They are beautiful pieces that were seen from time to
time on Taylor.

The Bulgari jewels that were the more iconic pieces of Taylor’s were the emerald pieces bought by Burton. The prices at auction for 5 of the Bulgari emerald pieces ranged from $3 million- $6 million. There was one emerald piece that was Bulgari but only sold for $1.5 million (buyer’s premium included). This emerald and diamond flower brooch. It was purchased by Eddie Fisher, you can read more on it here.

Elizabeth is wearing the brooch with earrings bought by Burton and you can feel the tension as Fisher tries hard to keep Taylor happy. The brooch still did well above its $200,000-$300,000 estimate. For those interested the emerald earrings did 16 times better than the high estimate of $200,000!

The Current Auction

The restraining order has Eddie Fisher as the plaintiff with a signature by Elizabeth Taylor-Burton as the defendant. A restraining order filed after she married Richard Burton, which I found interesting. The end of the relationship with Eddie was frightening for Elizabeth. An article claims that Taylor woke up with a gun to her head by Fisher. Fisher didn’t pull the trigger saying she was too pretty to kill. Taylor left with her children after that. This is not the only restraining order, Heritage auctions sold one from around the time of this one several years ago.

Will be interesting to see if anyone bids on the document and how much
it goes for. What do you think of the jewelry Eddie picked? If you had the
funds would you have paid the bill in the divorce? Thank you for visiting and I
hope you visit Data in the Rough next week!